


Into the Night, Evermore

by TheKillingJar



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Body Horror, Fictober, Fictober 2016, Gen, The Unknown (Over the Garden Wall), Tragedy, fictober2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 13:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8250475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheKillingJar/pseuds/TheKillingJar
Summary: For a biologically immortal being the thought of his life getting extinguished by a violent death rarely occurred to the likes of The Beast. Especially when death was something as simple as a teenager blowing out a flame.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is so scattered and short but I wanted to get something out there for fictober. In my defense I wrote this in a day and am aware it's not great. Please feel free to let me know what you dislike about it :) week one prompt: heart, cruel, infinite.

_"Fear has a name_  
_Written on unhallowed ground_  
_With dead leaves_  
_Those words never fail_  
_To feed the hunger that dreams"_  
_~Dead Lover's Lane, H.I.M_

* * *

  
  
When the stars burst in a brilliant technicolor radiance it sparked life within the primordial darkness. From that darkness he rose. Cloaked in shadow and carved from trees that had not yet been constructed in any world. Most notable of his ghastly appearance were his eyes. Huge circular orbs ringed in pastel primaries just as the stars he was birthed from. Glowing bright and ethereal all the same.

Along with him followed a tiny flame and the formation of his realm. It hardly mattered if the pagan gods of old created him, or God with a capital "G", or even The Blind Idiot God Azathoth.

What did matter was how he held dominion over the home he was born into. A home he could never leave. And why would he want to? As easily as mortal beings drew breath or blinked their thin little eyelids, he was able to shift the world around him. His world. At just a thought he could make his dimension as vast as make-believe. So the creature did. The land that existed between life and death knew no limits.

As long as the lick fire of that accouched beside him remained lively.

Eons passed before entities not of his own design wandered into his den. The human race blinked into existence. What flawless timing! Passage of so many years without sustenance weakened him. Weakened the small flame. With the light of his life growing dimmer his little dimension became a task to morph. It was fading, and he with it.

Unlike himself, these lost souls could find a way out. He wasn't able to keep all of them ensnared within his branches. Then there were those who found no redemption, those who gave themselves to their despair must stay. If one could not grow as a person they had to grow as a tree. Edelwood.

Dead leaves bathed in autumn's colors would sprout out from beneath skin, roots wildly broke free from feet. Branches came forth from every direction. Branches that decided to grow out of sockets and through the eyes always gave an amusing _pop!_ It was grotesquely beautiful when one stopped struggling and submitted to their fate. They bled sap and wept roses.

Pure instinct told him to consume them once they became frozen in a shape that greatly resembled his own. Practically cannibalism. That didn't work out well. He lacked actual teeth. Gnarled bark chomping on bark. Trial, error, and a large deal of frustration later and he found the sap inside of them made wonderful oil that did a marvelous job keeping his flame alight. Strength in the fire meant strength in himself.

Oil fueled the fire and the essence of the lost would become intertwined with him. Their screams of agony etched into his wooden flesh. Until they slowly faded into true nothingness.

In the stretch of a millennia it quickly became good sport. Hunting the lost and convincing them to stay. Sometimes misleading the dead humans to become his conduits, to do his dirty work. It rarely took effort, just a few honeyed whispers. He played the part of trickster in his realm, a grand deceiver unto himself. The Beast. An apt title. A faceless monster has no need for a true name, but an infamous title that spread fear among his prey was useful. At last he, The Beast, was rightfully born. And his games saved him from boredom. Were these actions necessary to survival or just his own malicious intent? Who could say?

Entirely different eras passed through his realm of the Unknown, a labyrinthine forest, and he flourished. Power nearly without boundary combined with agelessness elevated The Beast above the measly status of kings. To the unfortunate souls who traveled through the Unknown he was a god. The sole creature who pulled the strings of fate. Crowned in bones, laureled in tears.

Nil a creature, place, or thing, living or dead, could have predicted his dethronement. A coup d'etat executed by a teenage boy whose life was a mere drop in a sempiternal ocean.

The Beast was composed to be biologically immortal. The thought of outside forces extinguishing him hardly occurred to The Beast. Perhaps he should have been more aware that he was not an unstoppable force. Someone discovered his achilles heel and exploited it to the fullest.

The atmosphere around him had grown frigid without his command. It was entirely too dry as the tiny embers of his life were snuffed out. Debris flowed freely in his lungs, enabling speech as well as action.

  
A wail of _"No!"_ was all he could muster.

Then...

Ashes to ashes.

Would The Beast meet his maker? Would he simply disappear? He knew not.

Would another come after him to claim his bloodied crown for their own? A line of succession of sorts, for a land falls into chaos without order.

These are thoughts he wished he had time to ponder. _Ha_! He used to have all the time in the world. The stab of malefic irony was far from lost on him. The most utterly bizarre smile crept over his hallowed mouth. All the while the flame died. And The Beast with it.

* * *

  
_"Trapped in autumn_  
_Buried beneath the leaves_  
_To the echo of summer_  
_Softly weeping_  
_Sinking further_  
_In this sanguinary sea_  
_Painting pain with pastels_  
_Through her cemetery eyes"_  
_~Into the Night, H.I.M_

**Author's Note:**

> Azathoth is from the Cthulhu mythos. It is said he was the first being ever to exist and does nothing but sleep, but he's so powerful that everything he dreams comes to life. "When he wakes up, we don't." If his dreams were to ever end everything would cease to exist. True cosmic horror at it's finest!


End file.
